Maryada FF: Vidya-Gaurav (p. 30) - Page 7

Originally posted by: tamushi

it's the best ff that I have ever read till date. It's amazing how you describe each character's inner feelings/thinking based on their personality.
Thanks for writing this.Please let me know if you have wrote any other ff before.

Chapter 14: Spying from Windows

He wondered if Salome was not picking up his calls on purpose or if she was in trouble and needed his help. He sent her one last text to join the other five that he had sent over the last three days. If he did not receive an answer to this one, he would be over at her place, although he knew that she did not like him showing up unannounced. He understood why. She was a proud woman. Just like how she had always insisted on never taking any financial help from him, she had never wanted him to see her in any aspects of her profession. But she had accepted his financial advice and over the years had become the silent investor in a few profitable ventures. Her clients now were only those rare ones that she could not say no to due to… reasons. But it rankled her that she hadn't yet reached a position when she could completely refuse. She often joked with him that she could not wait until she aged and her beauty disappeared completely so that no one will seek her out and she could live in peace. He had told her that those were three different things that had no connection with each other. She could age and her beauty may yet remain intact and she may find peace no matter what… or any other combination thereof… she had told him to limit his permutations to financial data. And he had told her that life worked the same way, everything was a calculated risk of gains and losses. And she had asked him what had made him sign up for such a definitive loss in her case. It had been an uncharacteristic self-deprecation on her part and he had merely looked at her without validating it with an answer. She would have hated any answer anyways. He had learned long ago that nothing in this world could fight self-contempt. Then she had told him something that he would never forget…. "Sometimes I really do think that you are too good to be true, Gaurav." He would never forget it because he didn't think that she had meant it exactly as it sounded.

He typed in what he wanted to say,

"Just let me know that you are okay."

He left the phone on the table and walked away from the room. He was supposed to be moving the last of his stuff into the joint bedroom with Vidya and he had managed to find a good enough couch with a pull-out bed that seemed semi-comfortable. His back was starting to ache in earnest after three days of making do with the lounging chair. Today was his last day off from work; he had thought that a week was aplenty for an unwanted wedding and his small financial consulting firm didn't run by itself, particularly as his limited staff still relied on him for every minor detail. He had been doing work from home for a week, which had been unavoidable, but he had been trying to keep it to a minimum, even though Vidya did not make too many demands on his time at all. He wondered what she did all day. He had seen her in the kitchen at times, on the grounds at other times going for walks by herself, and then at other times with his mother and Imli. Adi was already quite chummy with her and he had noticed that his wife really did have a pretty smile, which often came out with all of Adi's teasing. Uttara maasi had not come to their home after the reception fiasco, although Adi, who talked to her more regularly than he did, had told him that she was safe and unhurt since the incident. He could only guess at the truth of the matter.

Once he set up the new couch and came back to his room, he saw that he had a text back.

"I am alright. Don't worry about me. I have to take a trip. Won't be back for a week."

He wanted to refrain from replying, but he couldn't help himself. She was purposely cutting him off now, he knew.

"Why are you doing this? Are you worried that I won't give my wife a fair chance to tempt me if I get to see and talk to you?" He replied.

He moved more things out of the room, trying to focus on the chore to keep from getting worked up. Ten minutes later, he received her reply,

"You are married, Gaurav. You are actually married. Not just in theory, but in reality. Another woman has a true claim on you now. Don't you understand what that means?"

He could not control the anger that swept through him then as he texted back,

"No, I don't. I am bit slow on the uptake, so please explain to me how this is any different now from the past few months when you thought that this was the greatest idea in the world."

He only had to wait a few more minutes this time for the answer to come back,

"Oh Gaurav, don't be so obtuse. You must have known that this would change things. I know that you think differently from the rest of us folks bound by the codes of this hypocritical society, but really, are you so very different? Answer me this then; if you see me again, will you be able to sleep with me? Give it some thought before you answer."

He closed his eyes as he was overtaken by a most violent urge to throw the phone against the wall. But he was not a violent man and he didn't. Instead, he left the phone on the bedside table and walked out of the room to clear his head.

He walked towards the east side balcony, but as he approached, he saw that his father was home early from work, now standing against one of the recesses in the wall with a single window that looked out onto the balcony. He was sipping what appeared to be coffee as he watched something intently. Gaurav slowed and changed direction to walk into his parlor that connected to the balcony so that he could see what his father was watching without calling attention to himself.

There was a sinking feeling in his chest as he took in the sight, which he didn't realize until now was something that he had been expecting with dread.

Vidya was out on the balcony, reaching for one of his shirts that was hanging off of the high clothesline that was moving around in the wind out of her reach. The edge of her sari that covered her midriff was flying up in the air and he saw her trying to tuck it into the waist of her sari a few times. But each time she reached up, it would untuck and fly back up in the wind.

His chest was beating hard as he made his way out of the parlor and onto the balcony, but he tried to keep a casual pace as he approached her, as if he had just been on a stroll and happened upon the sight of her. He slowed when he knew that he was in his father's sight and approached Vidya from behind. He knew that he couldn't just pull the sari down without drawing his father's suspicion. Thus, he flanked her from the back to block his father's view of her as he reached over her hands to grab the shirt off its pins. She looked up at him in surprise and he smiled as he gave her the shirt, hoping that nothing in his behavior made her doubt the reason behind his sudden appearance.

"Thank you." She murmured as she took the shirt from him, blocking her eyes from the sun by holding one hand up over them. She was squinting up him as the sun's glare reflected off of his glasses.

He came closer to her to block the bright rays and saw her eyes relax and brighten. He smiled too as he took the clothes from her arms, "I will get these for you. Most of them seem to be mine anyways."

"It's alright…" she started but he took them from her anyways and gently nudged her in front of him to start walking back into the house, going by the way of his parlor rather than the main entrance.

He thought of having to start his office tomorrow and the long hours that he worked and leaving her alone in this house… between his mother's running around, Imli's distraction, Adi's law school classes, and Sweety's university, everyone would be off in one direction or the other, leaving her essentially by herself, to be preyed upon...

"What do you think about going back to school, Vidya?" he asked, just as they were entering his parlor.

He saw her start of surprise before she looked back at him in astonished pleasure.

"Truly?"

He nodded at her enthusiasm. He couldn't remember meeting anyone this excited about the prospect of university.

"I take it you like that idea." He said now, smiling.

She smiled in return and nodded and he silently sighed in relief.

Chapter 15: Maths and Marriage

"What exactly is your degree in?" He asked her that night in their room as he pulled out the couch bed and she walked over with sheets and pillows for him.

"B.Sc. in Maths." She answered as he took one end of the sheet from her and they spread it over the pull-out bed.

"Really?" he looked at her in surprise.

"With Distinction." She answered and he could hear the unmistakable pride in her voice.

"Wow." Now he was truly impressed. He had no idea that he had married a math whiz. "Why didn't you go on?" he asked, genuinely curious.

She fluffed the pillows and looked up at him with a smile, "My parents thought that you were better than higher education even though I tried to tell them that I was much better at Maths than Marriage."

Had his wife just cracked a joke? He looked at her curiously and saw her bite her lips, first to control a smile and then in confusion at his lack of reaction, before she said, "Bad joke. Sorry."

He laughed out loud then and she tilted her head just to make sure that he was indeed laughing in real before she too smiled. "Lord, I was starting to think that you just wouldn't get my odd sense of humor."

"That may still be true." He replied and she stopped smiling and looked at him. He kept his face serious for a moment before he gave her a wink and smiled as he said, "Just keeping you on your toes."

Her smile was back as she walked to the bed and he climbed onto his couch bed.

"So, are you like that girl from Swades? Can you do crazy problems with decimals in your head?"

This time she laughed out loud as she looked at him. "I can try."

"Alright, hold on… let me get a calculator, because mental math with 3 and 4 digits is not my specialty."

She waited on the bed, tying her hair up into a ponytail while he found his calculator.

"Alright, something simple first…" he said before looking at her and asking, "what is 364 plus 645"

"Oh, come on! Addition?" she tsked and shook her head as she said, "One thousand and nine."

"You are like the Swades girl!" he said with a smile before asking, "Alright Ms. I-tsk-at-long-addition. How about 1009 divided by 34?"

She lay down on the bed facing him and balanced her head on her elbows as she closed her eyes and said, "hmm… twenty nine point six, seven… six… four… seven……. zero…..hmm… five…"

"Alright, that's good, that's good!" He interrupted, holding up his hands and she squeezed her eyes shut as she said, "eight…" and then opened them up to say, "You broke my concentration."

"That's eight numbers after the decimal. There's only space for two more numbers on this calculator. Let's just say that I am sufficiently impressed."

She grinned widely now as she looked at him, "You know, this is barely math. It's just a savant skill for quick computations. Advanced mathematics is more conceptual. That's more difficult."

"I see…" he said as he got up off of his bed and walked to the table for his laptop.

"So, can I take a guess here and imagine that you want to do your masters in Maths?" he asked as he turned on his laptop.

"I do… but I was also thinking that I can maybe take some classes in English?"

"Why?" he looked away from the laptop and towards her.

"Hmm.. why?... so that I can expand my repertoire into two languages when I am cursing out my husband in my head. I hear that the English language is creative with its insults."

Another one! He laughed in his head before it actually came through his lips. Her humor definitely took some time to get used to…especially because she was so matter-of-fact when she actually made a joke and then looked at him to see his reaction before giving into laughing…

"Married for just a week and my wife is already thinking of learning another language to curse me out. I think you are not the only one who sucks at this marriage business, Vidya…"

She smiled at him and straightened from her elbows before moving back to the other side of the bed to get under the covers. Even though they had said it in a joke, she wondered as she lay down why it was that he did not share a bed with her. She was relieved, but it still left her curious. He was a nice man and contrary to how he had seemed those first few days, was not entirely averse to her. She didn't know quite what to make of him, although she did find that she liked seeing him and talking to him. Just before she fell asleep, she sent up a prayer that she would not dream again of Uttara maasi and her husband like she had been for the past three nights. The worst was that nightmare always ended with her running away from Rishab but then looking back to see that it was not Rishab chasing her, but SSP Brahmanand Jhaakar. It left a sour feeling in her when she woke in the morning.

Gaurav pulled up the website of Sweety's university and went through the admissions website before pulling up the course catalog. He looked back at his wife and found that she had fallen asleep. He stayed up for some more time looking through the catalog and bookmarked it so that she could look through it tomorrow.

Just before he fell asleep that night, Salome's question came back to haunt him.

"I know that you think differently from the rest of us folks bound by the codes of this hypocritical society, but really, are you so very different? Answer me this then; if you see me again, will you be able to sleep with me? Give it some thought before you answer."

Originally posted by: darlunia

Great updates Devi!

I think you had mentioned that Vidya had studied for 4 years or something like that right? Its minutiae but in India, undergraduate BSc type degrees are typically 3 years...Engineering is 4 years while Medical school is 5. I am only pointing it out as it struck me that you might not live in India...😆.

Your Salome is interesting but appears insecure with her need for Gaurav to prove his affections. I guess it has to do with the nature of her profession. I also find Vidya's humor and thoughts quite contemporary...more urban than what her background would suggest. Hope we learn more about her upbringing.

Originally posted by: tamushi

thanks for another lovely update.
I just love the conversations between these two as they try to know about each other.

fyi , if you see a bloodshot eyes zombie roaming around the streets, that's me- I have been reading Shiv-Gauri ffs since yesterday non-stop with no sleep whatsoever(except family duty breaks here and there). I just loved the dialogues in your ff, they are amazingly and sense of humour in them is just so amazing.More than once I found myself chuckling while reading in dead of the night. I don't have to tell you how hot some of the chapters were(I was glad it was cold here yesterday)😃
Shiv-gauri and Thalia were my most favourite characters from your ff. I just loved the banter between shiv-gauri and thalia-Gauri. I wished you had explored more on Thalia.

But this Gaurav-Vidya ff is absolutely mindblowing with so much insight in their situations.I am so glad they try to understand each other and converse maturely without any physical undercurrents occupying their minds.

Originally posted by: sridevi27

Lol... yes, it was just explained to me that BSc in India is typically 3 years (oops :).

As for Vidya, you have touched upon my major weakness in writing about Vidya's character - I can't quite write about her as they portray her on the show (I have no experience with the culture and life style of rural living in India).. hence I have made her background a bit different as well. She is from a larger village and went to a nearby town for college and completed her bachelors. She is evidently on the intelligent side... I wonder if we need more than this cluster of traits and circumstances to explain her particular wit. :) If we do, I will keep her wit and trade her background for something different ;)

-Devi

Chapter 16: The Mother of All Evils

"If I refrain from sleeping with you, I would think that it would make you happy." He looked at what he had written and then erased it. She would take it the wrong way. Sex was always a subject of contention, for obvious reasons. She relied on it both to celebrate and denigrate love depending on her mood. If he could not be privy to the subtle changes in her expressions beforehand, he would not know what her mood exactly was, which would then lead to emotional meltdowns when he miscalculated.

"Sex is the last thing that should determine whether I love you or not. So I fail to see exactly what it would prove even if we do not share physical intimacy given the change in my circumstances." He hit send before he changed his mind yet again. This was only the 11^th reply that he had erased and retyped.

Vidya walked into the room from the bathroom changed into another one of her cotton saris that she always wore. He had noticed that she did not know how to make the pleats correctly and they were always a bit crooked. He had meant to ask his mother to help her but had forgotten.

Today was her first day of coaching classes for the entrance exam that she would have to take in a few months to join the Master's program and he smiled at the level of excitement that she was trying to keep under the lid. He was sure that she had been bored sitting at home for the past week as she went through the course catalogues of all the universities and local colleges around before finally deciding on several programs that she wanted to apply to and then telling him about going for coaching.

His cell phone rang just then and he picked up when he noticed that it was from his office. He had been back at the office for a week now and was still working overtime to make up for the amount of work that had piled up in his absence. As he listened to Vikash, one of his full-time staff, give him the details of the contract for a new major client, he gestured for Vidya to come closer. When she was near him, he gestured towards her sari pleats and as she looked down in confusion. He pulled the pleats out and she looked up at him in surprise and he shook his head with a laugh.

"What, sir?" He heard Vikash ask at the other end of the line.

"Oh nothing Vikash. Sorry about that. Continue."

Meanwhile, he gestured for her to watch as he showed her how to make the pleats properly and unraveled it again when he was done to give it back to her so that she could do it herself. She looked up at him in wonder – he was sure that she wanted to know where he had learned to wrap a sari on a woman – and then raised an eyebrow in question. He wiggled his eyebrows back at her, letting her know that it was his secret. She smiled and took the sari back as she replicated his pleating process and when she was done and was about to tuck it in the same way she always did, he stopped her and gestured to do it the other way. She did and then looked up in surprise that it was something so simple that made all the difference in how neatly the pleats lay against the rest of her sari. He smiled in amusement and asked her to get ready quickly.

"That's alright Vikash. I will take a look at it when I get to the office." He ended the call and turned to see her carrying what looked like notebooks.

"Vidya, you have 4 hours of tutoring. Wouldn't you rather type?" he asked just as he was reminded that she did not have a laptop. He would have to get her one. Wait, but…

"Wait, do you know how to type?" .

She nodded but then said, "Why can't I write? Four hours is not too much."

"You can use one of my old laptops. You know how to use Microsoft Word, right?"

She nodded and he went to his attached office to bring back one of the few laptops that had been collecting there that he no longer used. She shook her head when she saw it and said, "no, no... that looks expensive. I am really alright with taking notes. I have been doing it this way forever."

"Well, then it's time to change with the times, isn't it?" He turned on his laptop and made sure that he could open Word and then gave it to her with its charger.

"You are really being too nice." She said as she took the laptop from him.

He paused and looked at her. "You think so? Really? Should I be less nice?"

She nodded in seriousness and he was caught off guard and stared at her. And just when he thought it was different this time and that she was not being funny, it appeared slowly… her smile that came on incrementally before it turned into a full laugh.

"Do you know that your humor is not odd at all? It's wicked, scandalous even." He said without smiling.

Her smile disappeared quickly and she pursed her lips as she looked at him with the same expression that he had look at her earlier, trying to figure out if he was going to laugh.

For that reason, he held off longer than usual and just as she blinked her eyes rapidly in that way that he was starting to realize denoted embarrassment, he finally gave in and laughed.

She didn't join him right away and he knew that he had disconcerted her truly. "Oh come on, Vidya. I was just kidding. But at least you won't think I am too nice now."

This time she smiled and said, "yes, yes… keeping me on my toes. I think I have gotten so used to people not really understanding my sense of humor. Or even if they do get it, they usually don't know how to tease me back the same way. So, this is just new with you, that's all."

He thought of telling her that he never laughed with anyone else like he did with her. But that was an admission that felt private and somehow intimate and he did not want that. He did not want any self-consciousness on either of their part and he had found out that the best way to muck up something was to acknowledge that it was actually happening and thus calling attention to it. He was almost normal with Vidya… he was not overly serious or overly melancholic or any of those things that he knew was his standard reputation. It helped that she knew almost nothing else about him. And he wanted to hold onto this way of being with another human being for as long as it would last…

And thus, he just smiled at what she said and asked her if she was ready to go.

Just as he dropped her off at the coaching center and was about to turn out of the parking lot, his phone beeped.

The text was just one line, "Are you sleeping with her?"

He closed his eyes with a sigh. He knew that she knew that he was not. But she wanted him to feel what she felt and so he replied,

"You know the answer to that question, but I will answer you anyways. No, I am not sleeping with my wife. I am not sleeping with anyone. In fact, I am starting to think that an oath of celibacy may do me some good. It won't be that hard, Salome. You know better than most that sex is just a physical activity. It's not a requirement for living or loving."

By the time he reached his office, he had received a return text from her.

"Do I sound needy and bitter, Gaurav? I think I do. You'll have to excuse me this once. I am a little stressed after this last journey. I went away to retrieve someone. My mother… she has returned finally. I don't really know if this is a good thing at all. But there are some crosses that everyone has to bear for life. She is mine just as your father is yours."